Maintain Your External Hard Drive with 3 Simple Tips

External hard drives are usually a device that people take for granted and never care about it, until something goes wrong. Why not try and look after your external hard drive with these three simple tips.

#1. Store Your External Hard Drive Flat

If you own a magnetic external hard drive then these hard drives are typically built to lie flat. You should not tilt it up on its side because it has fast spinning platters and a magnetic needle inside, much like a record player.

The way the magnetic external hard drive is designed, the needle moves in millionths of an inch towards the platter but never actually makes contact with it. This extreme precision is based on the fact that your external hard drive should be lying flat.

If your external hard drive is not lying flat then the needle can possibly get too close or too far away from the platter. This can slow down your external hard drives read speed and performance.

This tip does not apply to a solid-state hard drive as it has no moving platters inside.

#2. External Hard Drive Cables Maintenance

There are a few things that you can do with the cables to your external hard drive. One thing is to make sure that they are secure and not loose with the connections. This can cause the external hard drive to connect and then disconnect from the computer without you knowing. This means that it might disconnect in the middle of file transfer which is not good for any hard drive.

Another way to improve performance on your external hard drive is to have shorter cables. This means that the data transfers faster. Long cables are great and handy but short cables are efficient and fast.

#3. Buy the Right External Hard Drive In The First Place

There are so many different types of external hard drives, it is really hard to choose which external hard drive is best for you. There are definitely cheap and nasty copies of external hard drives that seem to have all the features that you need but the hardware inside is dismal.

Some external hard drives come with loose cables and inferior hardware inside. The best way to know if you’re buying the right external hard drive for you is to do your research.

When buying an external hard drive you would expect it to last at least three years or more. Of course that is you’ve you maintain your external hard drive with the tips I mentioned above.

Bonus Tip: External Hard Drive Security

This is more of a prevention tip than a maintenance tip. Store your hard drive in a secure place so thieves cannot simply pick it up and take it. External hard drives are usually holding valuable backup information and files and people often neglect the simple security.

Of course people do encrypt files on the hard drive but this will not stop people from accessing the files. Smart hackers can always break your external hard drive security and get what they want eventually. But if you store your hard drive away from prying eyes then we can pretend that your external hard drive does not exist.